The assigned readings are pretty good, but I ended up not doing them on time. I usually did some skimming of a few resources, but would only actually read them properly to find quotes or sources for the essays.

The essays were graded pretty leniently.

Lectures were very hard to listen through, and not very engaging. Instructor is passionate about the subject and you can feel it, it's just the delivery and the organization of the lectures was extremely lacking. Discussion sections had mandatory attendance and were centered around the readings, which were also needed for the essays. The essays were decently chill.

The professor was super kind and he deeply enjoyed lecturing. I highly recommend this class!

Professor Terraciano is very passionate and is quite the figure in his respective field. While Professor Terraciano is an excellent lecturer, your grade is entirely dependant on your TA. Your grade is composed of four essays + showing up for discussion. Read and spend time on your essays and you will do fine

I think it was a lot heavier on the reading that I thought it was going to be. There are weekly readings and it could be up to 100 pages, unfortunately. However, I got through the class without reading any of the readings, when I went to discussion, we would go over potential good quotes or read little sections of the readings that would be relevant for the essays, so that made it easier! I'd say my TA didn't give out 100, I put in quite a lot of effort on my essays and I received a 90% but then I read her feedback and on my next essay I received a 93%. The midterm and final are written essays as well, and I'd say I got better grades on those, so maybe they grade lighter on the exam essays? Overall, I'd say I had to do a lot more work than expected but still very doable to get an A!

Lectures are really interesting though not required. Discussion madatory. Overall chill class, but tough TA graders. Half get Bs